Shorebird numbers and variety have been not been great statewide this spring, though there have been some hot spots. Here is an inspirational story from the folks who study red knots, courtesy of Lucy Miller of Florida's The Nature Conservancy... May 29, 2012, 4:19 pm A Red-Knot Celebrity Is Back in Town By GLENN SWAIN <http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/author/glenn-swain/> On Monday morning, Patricia M. Gonzalez, an Argentine biologist, was standing on the balcony of a house in Reeds Beach, N.J., peering through a telescope at shorebirds. She spotted a bird with an orange band around its leg, possibly suggesting that it had been tagged in South America. It was then that she realized that B95 <http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/canada/b95-the-toughest-four-ounces-of-life.xml?s_intc=tab1p2>, a legendary red knot <http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red_knot/lifehistory>, was walking across the sand in front of her. "My hands were shaking and my heart was beating fast," said Dr. Gonzalez, who works for the Global Flyway Network and the Fundación Inalafquen in Rio Negro, Argentina, and is collaborating with a local conservation group in Delaware Bay. She rushed for her camera and pressed it against the telescope lens, snapping 10 photos in the hope that at least one would capture B95. One shot showed it skittering across the sand. For Ms. Gonzalez, it brought back memories from February 1995, when she first placed the orange band on the bird in Rio Grande, Argentina. At the time research had recently begun on the plight of the red knot, whose survival was threatened by the harvesting of the fatty horseshoe crab eggs around Delaware Bay. Every May the red knot makes a crucial refueling stop, feasting on the eggs around the bay, on its 9,300-mile migration route from Tierra del Fuego in Argentina to the Canadian Arctic. Dr. Gonzalez last saw B95 in December when she was in Argentina, where it was easier to spot because there are fewer red knots there and because they like to return to the same wintering areas. The last time she saw it in the United States was in May 2009 at Moores Beach on Delaware Bay. B95 has become somewhat of a celebrity bird. Thought to be at least 19, it is assumed to be the oldest rufa red knot on record. The writer and conservationist Phillip Hoose <http://philliphoose.wordpress.com/>, who has monitored the bird's movements for three years, wrote a book about it titled "Moonbird: On the Wind with the Great Survivor B95,"<http://philliphoose.wordpress.com/books/%E2%80%A2-moonbird/> which is due in July. "I was looking for a single individual creature to illustrate the tragedy of extinction," Hoose said. "B95 allowed me to celebrate the entire life form by celebrating an individual. He is the most inspiring creature I know of." Given its estimated age and migration cycle, B95 is thought to have flown more than 350,000 miles, about the average distance from the Earth to the moon. Charles D. Duncan<http://www.manomet.org/about/people/staff-members/charles-duncan>, director of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences' Shorebird Recovery Project<http://www.manomet.org/program/shorebird-conservation>, said that the resightings of B95 were important because the bird "has come to be an inspiration and symbol of hope for the recovery of his kind and the coastlines they depend on." On Tuesday, Dr. Gonzalez was on the lookout for B95, through trying to keep her excitement in check as she worked on her broader observations. "As researchers we must remain objective, but researchers have emotions, too," she said. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]